


show you my best side (tell you all my best lies)

by backofthefront



Series: so save that heart for me [3]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Healthy Relationships, M/M, Mutual Pining, Platonic Cuddling, The Author Regrets Nothing, i promise at some point in this series they will get it together, real hockey mentioned, that is not actually platonic, this deviated from the original point.... thats a whole other fic now smh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-30
Updated: 2017-08-30
Packaged: 2018-12-21 14:38:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11946360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/backofthefront/pseuds/backofthefront
Summary: They're still learning.





	show you my best side (tell you all my best lies)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from homemade dynamite by Lorde. This is a sequel to ‘stained glass variation of the truth,’ and third in the ‘so save that heart for me’ series. You don’t have to read the other parts, but some context might be missing.

 

Two days after an embarrassing loss to the Bruins, Kent Parson passes out on his home turf of a freshly-scraped Las Vegas rink. 

 

It should have been surprising. But he’d been feeling off for just under a week, and Kent had gone the usual route for when something was bothering him- he ignored it. He seethed that he had to go and pass out and ruin it all; he would have gladly grit his teeth and played through the pain. And the passing waves of nausea. And the vague, reoccuring dizzy spells. Maybe it wasn’t as unfair and unpredictable as he complained in his head, actually, but still. He could have managed. He always managed.

The Aces were set to play the Coyotes in Arizona that night. It would be an easy win, and they could do it without him, but now, officially out of the game, Kent felt fucking useless. 

 

It should make him feel better that he can chalk up the strange light-headedness of the past couple days to Lyme disease and not something emotional; it should sooth him to know the loss in Boston and his poor performance wasn’t purely his fault. 

It doesn’t. 

 

He’s benched, literally; perched on a bench, cool metal pressed against his calves and elbows resting on his knees. The horrible posture isn’t the reason that Swoops shoots him a concerned look. Kent grimaces, not making eye contact. He wishes he hadn’t fainted- and what a fucking stupid term, just naming it is demeaning- but at least he’d been the only one on the ice. (Well, besides the coaches and Swoops. Who’d caught him, apparently, before he could slam into the ice, and, well- that was something to dwell on later.) 

 

Lyme disease. “I can’t believe I was taken down by a fucking mosquito,” he grumbled to Swoops and the top-of-the-line doctors the Aces had on retainer. Swoops had laughed, glancing pointedly at the nurse before she could correct him and say, actually, we don’t know how it was transmitted to you. She said it to Swoops, instead, with her eyes, bit her lip as an indiscernible emotion composed partially of amusement flitted across her face, and turned back to her paperwork. Swoops could read other people, sometimes, just as easily as he could read Kent. 

 

When they pumped him full of antibiotics and told him he’d be two weeks on the bench, Swoops had placed a hand on the small of Kent’s back in restraint, since it wouldn’t do to have the renowned captain of the Aces fly off the handle and punch the team’s manager in the face. With some yelling from Kent and a calm point from Swoops that hey, Lyme disease wasn’t contagious from person to person and Kent’s ability to play was mostly at his own discretion, they’d set it, rather tentatively, at one week. 

 

Kent would miss three games, not including the Coyotes, merely hours away. 

 

When management refused to as much as allow Kent on the bus, though, even Swoops was tempted to side with Kent. (He’d been with the managers and coaches on the two-week recovery time, just because he knew Kent was the opposite of a hypochondriac and could probably use the pressure to just put his feet up sometimes, damn it. In the end, though, he could concede that Kent had been right- the team needed him, and besides that, he would be stir-crazy on the inside of three days.) No play was one thing. Confining him to the state of Nevada while the team traversed the country, winning and losing without him? That was a different monster. 

 

“I’m afraid the coaches want you here,” said Gary, one of the veteran ice crew members, when Kent had attempted to start stocking his gear on the bus. Kent already looked malcontent, not helped by the fact that, well, it was a bus. (Swoops hated the bus almost as much as Kent, but the drive from Vegas to Glendale’s suburbs was under five hours, and there had been some mumbling about cutting costs before the playoffs.) 

 

Swoops had been all nods and sympathetic frowns until Beckham, one of the assistant coaches, had popped out of nowhere with a clip board. 

 

“Troy, Parson. We’re not putting you in this one,” he’d said. Jeff looked at Kent. Kent looked at Jeff. Then, in unison, they both looked at Beckham. 

 

“What the fuck?” Kent asked. At least he wasn’t angry anymore, Swoops registered somewhere in the back of his mind. Just puzzled. 

 

“Yeah, the Lyme disease, Parson. You’re lucky they caught that when they did.” At that, Kent grimaced. 

 

“Yeah, lucky.” 

 

“Okay, but, me?” Jeff asked, hoping it came across as a coherent question. 

 

The coach nodded, scratching at his head and only seeming to vaguely keep track of what he was saying. “Yeah, they don’t see the point of putting you in tonight. You play better with Parson, and you're a great player by yourself, but it makes more sense to call up Ezra and Perry. They have a similar type of energy. Besides," and he winced a little, there, like an admission, "it wouldn't due to abandon our captain in a different state. Need someone around here to keep him in line, eh?" With that, he clapped Swoops on the shoulder, winked, and walked off. Kent shook his head, processing. 

 

“You’d think they coulda fuckin’ - come out here and- I dunno, talked it over, included us at all,” Parse grumbled, waving his hand as if to gesture at the situation that had just occurred. 

 

Jeff swallowed, ignoring the fact that his throat suddenly and inexplicably felt thick, ignoring the weird buzzing in his limbs. The managers and coaches weren’t the most observant people in the world, but they weren’t idiots, either. They knew Kent had no family besides his sister and mother, and barely any friends aside from the team. They also tended to magnify Kent’s more self-isolating tendencies as self-destructive. (Swoops only knew what Kent chose to reveal about his time before the draft, which wasn’t much, but even then it was easy for Swoops to understand that the party-boy persona he breezed in on was projected by everyone else more than by Kent himself, but he’d used it to cover the hurting in his heart and the chip on his shoulder when he’d gone first in that draft. He was better, now, had grown into himself, but the managers never stopped walking this precarious dance of trying to get Kent out of his shell and simultaneously reign himself in, to become less cocky but more confident, to become quieter but more sociable. This was a dance that only Swoops knew the steps to. A song where only Jeff knew the words. This was the most obvious instance, but just once in a long line of times where they had designated Swoops as Parse’s wrangler.) 

 

“It’ll be better,” Swoops blurted. Kent whipped his head around so fast that Swoops internally cringed for his neck. Kent gaped. 

 

“If they take both of us out they can move up Tracer and Stereo on our line, put Brent and Casey in the back, it will flow more smoothly.” Kent had paused, head cocked. He agreed, but didn’t want to admit it yet. Swoops let himself breathe. 

 

“Sides, Parse, you don’t know what you’d do without me,” Swoops joked softly, elbowing Kent in the ribs. Kent laughed breathily. The anger had subsided, and Swoops didn’t want to dwell on how pale he looked. 

 

Kent turned, nodded to the coach, and hoisted up his hockey bag before Swoops could protest. 

 

“I can get it, I’m not that sick.” His eyes held no room for discussion. Swoops could concede, let him have that one. Kent smiled, asymmetrical, one canine glinting under the exposure of the fluorescent lights. Swoops ignored the pull in his stomach and the hum in his ears. 

 

They meet in the parking lot after Swoops grabs his bags from the locker room. Kent is sitting in his car, which is as flashy as the rest of him (in humbling contrast to Jeff’s year-old Ford pickup). Of course, he was playing Britney, but at a much softer volume than normal. He turned it off when Jeff strolled up to his window, rapping a few times on the glass. 

 

The expression that Jeff was greeted with was infectious. Kent rolled the window down. As he leaned forward, conspirational and grinning, a few blond curls peeked out from under his customary backwards Aces cap. 

 

“Wanna head back to yours, or I could meet you?” Jeff asked, jerking a thumb over his shoulder towards his truck. Kent shook his head, gesturing towards the passenger seat. 

“Carpool.” 

 

Swoops grinned. It wasn’t unusual for them to live in each other’s pockets like this, but he still didn’t like presuming. When he slid into the passenger seat of Parse’s obscenely expensive car, though, greeted with the icy blast of AC and the supple leather molding to his skin like he belonged there, like he had never belonged anywhere else? It felt right. Like home. 

 

It beat the pickup sitting in the parking lot. It always would. 

\---------

  
  


It is an easy win. The Aces get a shutout, 4-0. Swoops prohibits Kent from turning on the game to watch, and Kent, surprisingly, doesn’t put up much of  a fight. They both knew it would just end up being frustrating for the both of them. It’s rare for Swoops to be on the outside looking in when it came to hockey, but it was even more rare for Kent. Instead, they put on the Clippers game, Parse’s phone occasionally pinging with an Aces update. 

 

A few minutes into the game, Kent’s stomach makes a noise like a dying whale, and he rolls his eyes. “I need to go to the grocery store,” he says, and then it’s Swoops’ turn to do the eye rolling. Kent always needed to go to the store, but never quite seemed to get there. It didn’t help that he was a takeout monster who couldn’t cook for shit. 

 

“I’ll go try to find something,” Swoops said, leaping up, digging in his pocket and tossing Kent his wallet. “Order a pizza on your phone? Use my card; it’s the least I can do.” Kent rolls his eyes, but closes out of twitter and opens Papa John’s, so Swoops knows he’s won. 

 

Jeff rummages around Kent’s kitchen until he rounded up some queso cheese and stale chips, then chirps Kent for not having any food in the house despite the amount he’s paid, and then chirps Kent some more for the way he calls it “dip cheese.” 

 

“Really, Parse?” he chuckles, flopping back down on the couch with two giant plastic bowls. One, a near fluorescent green, holds old tortilla chips, the other is basically tupperware without a lid and has the cheese.

 

“Fuck you, call it whatever, still delicious,” Kent laughed back, reaching an arm across Swoops’ lap before he’d even planted his ass entirely in the seat. He proceeded to get cheese all over his upper lip. Jeff turned quickly toward the tv and used every last drop of self-control to not stiffen. That would be unchill.  

 

“What do you want to watch now?” Jeff asked, one hand on the remote. Hie brows were raised, head cocked to the side. Jeff had the sudden thought that Kent would fit perfectly in the crook of his neck and shoulder. 

 

Kent shrugged. “Dunno. Swamp people?” He curled his lip, eyes scanning over the guide that Jeff has pulled up on the screen. The channel display scrolled past hundreds of hours of nothing. 

 

“Breaking Bad?” Jeff suggested, only half joking. Kent slapped him on the arm and groaned, burying his face in the throw pillow that had migrated into his lap. Jeff had seen the show thrice over, but what could he say, some things never got old. Kent hated it, though. 

 

Kent smirked. “I wanna watch Grey’s Anatomy,” he wheedled. Swoops rolled his eyes so far into the back of his head he thought he could see brain matter. 

“Pleeeease?” Kent laughed. He probably got more entertainment from roping Jeff into his Grey’s addiction than he got from watching the damn show. 

 

Jeff grumbled, but sighed in resignation as he pulled up the DVR. “Fine.” 

 

“Actually, I’m, uh, fine with Breaking Bad,” Kent said. Jeff turned to him, surprise written clear on his face. 

“Really? Parse, you hate that show.” 

 

Kent shrugged; the tips of his ears were tinged red. “I know. But if you were willing to put up with Grey’s for me, I can sit through that depressing ass show.” 

 

Jeff considered for a minute. “Or,” he said finally, laying a proposal out on the table, “we could skip the shows we’ve both seen a billion times and watch Married by Mom and Dad?” His finger hovered over the button to select the channel. 

 

Kent’s face lit up as he agreed, and he honest to god giggled. At that point, Jeff would have watched paint dry for hours to see that again. Fuck Breaking Bad, nothing was more captivating than Kent. 

 

Halfway into the episode, Kent has made himself at home draped over Jeff, very cozily nestled under his arm. It’s almost cuddling. It’s not cuddling. (It’s totally cuddling.) All very bros. 

 

That, of course, is when the doorbell rings. They’re both invested in the plot of this stupid show enough by now that Jeff actually pauses it as he goes to get the pizzas. 

 

He’s hefting the boxes away from the girl, who Jeff thinks would be pretty is she wasn’t in a red uniform stained with sauce and clearly tired, when Kent hastily pads up behind him. 

 

“Forgot to add the tip online,” he explains, shoving a wad of cash at the girl, who takes it, eyes wide like she can’t register how much it is. Kent places a hand on Jeff’s hip, half hidden behind him. He’s pulling, insistent, like the cat he’d named after himself. 

 

“C’mon, I’m starving,” he says, and turns back towards the living room. 

 

“Uh, thanks,” Jeff says, gesturing with his head toward the pizza boxes that are occupying both his hands. 

The girl grins, and she looks a little less tired. “No problem. You guys are cute together.” 

 

The door is shut in Jeff’s face before he can protest or even register why what the girl was saying didn’t sound wrong at all. 

 

\------

It becomes a thing, after that. Jeff comes over, sometimes, and they watch this stupid show about terrible relationships, and sometimes they order takeout when neither of them can be fucked to get groceries. 

“This show is so stupid,” Kent says once, after a girl on the show remarks how important it is for her to be married, but she would rather marry a stranger than a close friend. 

 

“We keep watching it,” Swoops replied in a monotone. 

 

“Yeah, but.” Kent pauses, shifts his weight so he’s laying in Jeff’s lap, still, but turned towards him and away from the tv. “Like, if I was gonna get married, I would marry my best friend. Before some rando my parents picked out.” His lip curls, and he’s turned back around before Jeff can even think to chirp him for the use of the word “rando.” 

(Honestly, Jeff is too busy trying to process that statement to chirp anyone, really. Possibly ever again.) 

 

“Everyone should marry their best friend. That’s like, what it’s about,” Kent says, and there’s a part of Jeff that is burning with the implications of those words, with Kent laying there in his lap, so light, like the only thing he’s given Jeff in terms of pressure is his physical weight. Jeff stifles a laugh at just how cliche it all is. 

 

When he finds himself carding a hand absent-mindedly through Kent’s soft curls, Kent on the verge of mewling, he can't find it in himself to even be mad about it. 

**Author's Note:**

> **All the Lyme disease info is as accurate as I care to make it; antibiotics take 2-4 weeks; Kent’s symptoms are real, etc. “Dip cheese” is a reference to Tyler Seguin, who didn’t know what queso was in an interview once and thus provides me eternal amusement. I’ve never seen a single episode of Married by Mom and Dad or Breaking Bad, and I’ve only seen like 3 of Grey’s Anatomy, but I have these headcanons anyway. Swoops also likes Burn Notice (a fave of mine), csi: insert city here, and Seinfeld. I don’t make the rules. (Actually, my story, yes I do.)


End file.
